Graphical deception, Advanced Statistics

Graphical deception : Statistical graphics which are not as honest as they should be. It is relatively simple.

To mislead the unwary with the graphical material. For instance, consider the plot of the death rate per million from the breast cancer, for number of periods over the last three decades, given in the

Figure drawn below. The rate appears to show the rather alarming increase. Though, when the data are replotted with vertical scale starting from zero, as shown in the Figure drawn below, the increase in the breast cancer death rate is altogether less startling. This instance illustrates that undue exaggeration or the compression of the scales is best avoided while drawing graphs. For one more example of a common graphical distortion see lie factor.